Once upon a time, “Movin’ Out” was just a song off Billy Joel’s breakthrough 1977 album “The Stranger.” Now “Movin’ Out” is a Tony Award-winning Broadway musical headed Tuesday through April 18 to the Fox Cities Performing Arts Center in Appleton.

John Selya Answers Your Questions The star of "Movin' Out" gives a Q&A for Pointe Magazine.

Q I love ballet with all my heart, but I also love musical theater. My mom says that eventually I will have to do one or the other. I don’t see how I could give up either. Were you ever faced with the same dilemma? What did you do?

A First off, consider yourself unusually lucky to have a choice between two types of dance. I never had to choose between the two, and luckily Twyla Tharp's choreography in Movin' Out uses, what is to me, a native ballet-based dance vocabulary. But if you have to choose between the two dance forms in the immediate future, I would recommend committing to ballet.

The show is coming to the Bay Area soon. Article from the Oakland Tribune.

Quote:

It's Twyla time

Dance legend Tharp conquers Broadway, books

By Chad Jones, STAFF WRITER

TWYLA THARP is deeply tired. It's an exhaustion brought on by excessive creativity. Within the last three years, the dance world legend has created a new kind of Broadway musical and written a practical guide to the creative process.

Although Billy Joel's father worked for the old DuMont television network, the family TV went on the fritz when he was 5. With his parents splitting up, he didn't get another set until he was in his late teens.

TWYLA THARP has been on the forefront of American dance for nearly four decades. But when it came time to make her mark on Broadway, the acclaimed choreographer decided to look back to a significant era in our country's past.

Holding court amid the upper-crust splendor of the Ritz Carlton Hotel on Nob Hill in San Francisco, one of the reigning doyennes of modern dance peers down her nose through black-rimmed eye glasses and exudes a distinctly formidable air. She's definitely got a way about her that makes her seem like an unlikely candidate to be a die-hard Billy Joel fan.

After having seen the preview performance in SF Tuesday night, I'm not sure this topic belings in the World Dance/Musicals forum. I have seen ballets with less ballet and modern dance works with less dance than "Movin' Out." The choreography is certainly ballet based with lots of modern dance influence (most of the dancers come from the world of ballet and modern dance).

If you enjoyed this work, then you should really check out any of the contemporary works performed by regular ballet companies.

``Movin' Out'' swept into San Francisco Wednesday night, riding high atop a whole new wave of musical theater.

Like a two-hour music video made flesh, ``Movin' Out'' has little substance but soars on its visuals. Director-choreographer Tharp celebrates the sheer ecstasy of bodies in flight, sinew set afire, as an ensemble of studly boys and leggy girls dance to 24 of Joel's pop standards. There is no dialogue to get in the way of the eye-candy, no nuance to detract from the pulse-pounding score.

Twyla Tharp is one of the most original, inventive and delightful choreographers of our era. But after watching ``Movin' Out,'' you'd never know that. In this simplistic story, it's hard to find a scrap of original movement or a shred of sincere feeling.

Tharp is known for her ability to mix high and low art, but in ``Movin' Out,'' which she not only choreographed but also conceived and directed, it's as if she were purposely dumbing down her work.

Since ``Movin' Out'' is wordless, apart from the lyrics of the 24 Billy Joel songs to which it is set, the dancing has to carry most of the show's emotional charge, but the choreography isn't up to the task.

'Movin' Out' is a new kind of theater By Pat Craig / CONTRA COSTA TIMES NEW JERSEY SOUL filled San Francisco's Golden Gate Theatre Wednesday, with the opening of "Movin' Out," the surprisingly touching blend of Billy Joel songs with Twyla Tharp choreography.

Movin' Out Is Billy Joel good enough to deserve imitation? We think not. BY MICHAEL SCOTT MOORE

Billy Joel is perfect for Broadway: big, dumb songs about love and pain. Choreographer and director Twyla Tharp has assembled a series of weirdly literal interpretive dances set to Joel songs that almost tell a story, starting with Brenda and Eddie in high school ("Brenda and Eddie were still goin' steady/ In the summer of '75").

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